U.S. Rep. Steve King suggests there is more than a coincidence between the resignation of White House communications director Anita Dunn and a raid on ACORN's national office  pointing out that Dunn's husband is "a leading ACORN defender."

Dunn, who is stepping down at the end of the month, created controversy when she led an Obama administration attack on Fox News, calling it "a wing of the Republican Party."

King, an Iowa Republican and a vociferous critic of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, issued a statement on Tuesday under the headline "King: Dunn Departure a Coincidence?" It read in part:

"Four days after Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell raided ACORN's national office in New Orleans, seizing paper records and computer hard drives, White House communications director Anita Dunn  the wife of a leading ACORN defender  has resigned abruptly from her position.

"Dunn was the lead critic of Fox News for reporting on the ACORN prostitution scandal, which originally broke on September 10. Dunn subsequently launched a public attack against Fox News on October 11, and she even stated 'let's not pretend they're a news network' in reference to Fox. . .

"Not only has Dunn lavished praises on Chairman Mao and compared him to Mother Teresa, Dunn’s husband has a public record of protecting ACORN and protecting President Obama’s relationship to ACORN. . .

"Anita Dunn is married to Robert Bauer, who served as general counsel for Obama for America. In 2008, Bauer sent a letter to then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey arguing that Department of Justice should not investigate election-related fraud allegations against ACORN. . .

"The letter also claims that Republican concerns regarding ACORN-related fraud were 'manufactured.' Subsequent revelations have validated these Republican concerns and proven the existence of additional fraudulent activities."

Bauer may have figured into Dunn's resignation in another way. On Friday, he was named to replace Greg Craig as White House counsel, and the prnewser Web site observed: "Did [Dunn] have to clear room for her husband to join the administration and remove any potential concerns about conflict of interest?"

A team of scientists has sent a letter to all U.S. senators warning that a claim there is "consensus" in the scientific community on the climate change issue is false.

The letter dated Oct. 29 reads in part: "You have recently received a letter from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), purporting to convey a 'consensus' of the scientific community that immediate and drastic action is needed to avert a climatic catastrophe. . .

"The claim of consensus is fake, designed to stampede you into actions that will cripple our economy, and which you will regret for many years. There is no consensus, and even if there were, consensus is not the test of scientific validity. Theories that disagree with the facts are wrong, consensus or no."

The five signees of the letter include professors from Princeton University, the University of Virginia and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The letter refers to an earlier open letter sent to Congress by those five signees and others declaring: "The sky is not falling. The earth has been cooling for 10 years, without help. The present cooling was NOT predicted by the alarmists' computer models, and has come as an embarrassment to them. . .

"We are flooded with claims that the evidence is clear, that the debate is closed, that we must act immediately, etc., but in fact there is no such evidence. It doesn't exist."

The Oct. 29 letter also notes that the American Physical Society, an organization of physicists, did not sign the AAAS letter and states the society is "at this moment reviewing its stance on so-called global warming, having received a petition from its membership to do so. That petition was signed by 160 distinguished members and fellows of the society, including one Nobelist and 12 members of the National Academies. Indeed a score of the signers are Members and Fellows of the AAAS, none of whom were consulted before the AAAS letter to you."

The petition reads in part: "Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth's climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.

"The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes  natural and human  on the Earth's climate."

The 160 signees of the petition range alphabetically from Harold M. Agnew, former White House science councilor and former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, to Martin V. Zombeck, a physicist formerly with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and include Ivar Giaever, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1973.

There's an easy explanation for low voter turnout in some areas of the country  more than 3.3 million voters on registration rolls are, in fact, dead.

And another 12.9 million voters remain on registration rolls in an area where they no longer live, according to an analysis by Aristotle International Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based company that provides voting data to political consultants and others.

That means that about 9 percent of all registered voters are "deadwood" voters  the term for voters no longer able to vote in a precinct.

"With deadwood exceeding one in seven in some counties, candidates might as well spend a day a week campaigning in the cemetery," John Aristotle Phillips, CEO of the company, told CNS News.

The state with the highest percentage of deadwood voters is Massachusetts, where 116,483 registered voters are dead  3.38 percent of the state's total  and 538,567 no longer live in the area where they are registered to vote.

Other states with a large percentage of deadwood voters include New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Wyoming, according to the Aristotle International analysis.

North Carolina is the state with the lowest percentage of voters considered deadwood. Although 3.5 percent of registered voters there are dead, just 30,888, or 0.5 percent, no longer live where they are registered to vote.

"Deadwood on voter rolls complicates the electoral process and can cause problems like fraud," said Phillips, and it "always creates a perception of low voter turnout."

4. Poll: Charging for Online Content Will Fail

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch created a stir recently when he vowed to start charging for online content from his publications, including The Wall Street Journal.

But a new poll by mediabistro.com suggests that creating a "pay wall" around online sites  charging for content  is doomed to fail.

Of the more than 1,680 respondents, 65 percent chose the option: "No, in fact it'll be the beginning of the end as readers flee to other free sources."

Another 20 percent said: "No, it'll generate some revenue but won't make a meaningful difference."

Only 12 percent said making readers pay will generate the revenue newspapers need to survive.

Murdoch is not the only publisher considering a pay wall, according to mediabistro: "Newsday recently began charging non-print subscribers, and The New York Times also is mulling over a fee-based online subscription."

Murdoch has also threatened to block the search engine Google from accessing articles on News Corp. Web sites. His media empire "would consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the Web," he was quoted as saying in The Guardian in Britain.

Mediabistro observed: "Does he really think that subscription revenue will more than make up for the ad revenue he'll lose when page views plunge?"

THAT basketball great LeBron James has a close friendship with another superstar of sorts  investor Warren Buffett.

"I think we get along because we're kind of like, we're humbled by our success," James told Bloomberg Television's Charlie Rose.

"We don't raise our head level above anybody with our success."

The NBA star also said of the billionaire Berkshire Hathaway chairman: "You've been around him, and I've been around him a lot. He's one of the most down-to-earth guys I've ever met."

THAT ABC News honchos are talking with George Stephanopoulos, moderator of the network's Sunday morning show "This Week," about switching to an anchor position on the weekday "Good Morning America" program.

Industry sources tell The Washington Post that Stephanopoulos, who served as President Bill Clinton's communications director, is giving serious thought to "GMA," where he would replace Diane Sawyer. She is leaving the show to take over ABC's evening "World News" broadcast when Charlie Gibson leaves in January.

While the switch from Sunday serious to weekday frivolous wouldn't boost Stephanopoulos' prestige, The Post notes, "it certainly would mean a hefty increase in pay and visibility."

THAT David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, has announced his support for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum in the race for the Republican nomination for governor in the Sunshine State.

McCollum is facing a challenge from GOP state Sen. Paula Dockery in his campaign to replace Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for the U.S. Senate.

"I have known Bill McCollum for many years and I know his record of conservative leadership," Keene said in a release.

"Bill McCollum's conservative credentials are unmatched and he is exactly what Florida needs. . .

"The notion that a tax and spend liberal like Paula Dockery would represent the core values of the Republican Party is laughable."

The American Conservative Union claims to be the nation's oldest and largest grass-roots conservative lobbying organization.